The chess match

After the morning skate on Tuesday, Moose coach Scott Arniel admitted that there were times during the first two games of his team's playoff series with the Syracuse Crunch that he was nervous about having the wrong matchups out there.

That won't be a problem in Game 3 tonight.

As the home team, of course, Manitoba gets the last line change. That means Arniel can send out his top shutdown unit of Colby Genoway, Mike Keane, Alexandre Bolduc, Nathan McIver and Maxime Fortunus against the Derick Brassard, Nate DiCasmirro, Gilbert Brule line for the Crunch.

"You get a feel as the game goes along, the scenarios you like to explore,'' Arniel said. "There's certain guys I want out on the icet at certain times. I like those five as my top five guys against the opponent's top line. The problem with Syracuse is they have three good lines. Our other guys have to be responsible.''

Syracuse forward Zenon Konopka said he and linemate Joakim Lindstrom were talking Tuesday morning about picking up their games.

"I feel like me and Lindstrom need to step up a little more,'' he said. "It's time to crank it up a notch. Battle for pucks.''

- The rest of Syracuse's equipment arrived in time for practice on Tuesday, so everyone got a full workout. But there was another challenge - bad ice.

"Horrific. Horrific. Even worse than the War Memorial,'' Konopka said. "I couldn't believe it. In Manitoba, you think they could find good ice.''

Syracuse's Mark Rycroft had a couple of theories. He said sometimes ice is kept soft in the morning, then shaved down and made perfect for gametime. Or, he said, maybe it's just too warm in the building for good ice.

- Syracuse goalie Karl Goehring's wife, Laura, and their two young children, as well as other family members, have joined him in Winnipeg. The Goehrings live in Grand Forks, N.D., about two hours away.

- Crunch defenseman Duvie Westcott, who is from Winnipeg, said he will have about 30 family members at tonight's game. He joked that the number could reach 50 by the time a postgame get-together hits a downtown pub.

Westcott was ticked that he could only scrape up six comps for the game. The team as a whole only got 20, and Westcott picked up a few from his teammates. He thinks the Crunch only got 20 because that's the number that the Moose asked for when they visited Syracuse. Of course, no one on Manitoba is from Syracuse.

"Make sure you write there that Manitoba is cheap,'' Westcott said. "You think they could give you two for each player.''

- I swear, sometimes I think some of the Manitoba media should come to games dressed in Moose jerseys.

All that needs to be noted is that said writer was not at either Game 1 or 2, and got his version of events from a player who was scratched in both games and another, Zack FitzGerald, whose job is to do the exact same things as Jon Mirasty. Now those are what I call credible sources.

No mention, of course, about how these Syracuse "clowns'' won 16 in a row, finished ahead of the Moose in the standings and produced third-period rallies in both games. Or how, aside from Konopka and Mirasty chirping Moose goalie Cory Schneider in pregame of Game 2, the series has been relatively clean so far. Well, except for that shot to the groin that Schneider gave Syracuse's Alexandre Picard in Game 2, but that wouldn't fit so nicely into the Manitoba party line, eh?

Syracuse is partly to blame for this, since it did lead the league in penalty minutes. But sometimes it's worth putting in a little effort to look past the stereotypes to the wonderful talents of Marc Methot, Goehring, Clay Wilson, Duvie Westcott, Derick Brassard, Gilbert Brule, Joakim Lindstrom, etc. I think that's a "sideshow'' that any team would love to have, even the sainted Moose.

I know Konopka is getting a little miffed at the Manitoba media spin. Another local writer keeps churning out that now it's up to Syracuse to make a countermove, that it's gutcheck time for the Crunch.

Huh? Konopka said on Tuesday. We're making our move. We've come from behind in both games to win one and had a chance to take another. Strategy is a big picture thing, not an over-reaction of zig-zagging patterns. Slash and jab these guys now, and Manitoba will feel it in Games 6 and 7. Now need to get away from our irritating style because it's 1-1 instead of 2-2.

But really, this is nothing new. In the playoff series between these teams two years ago, Manitoba spent the first-two games treating Crunch goalie Pascal Leclaire like a turnstyle, bam, bam, bam.

No, claimed then-Moose coach Alain Vigneault, you are seeing things. Actually, it's the Crunch who is plowing over my guy, Wade Flaherty. Oh, OK. The bleating was echoed in the Manitoba stories and, as a result, it was the Crunch that got the officiating scrutiny instead of Manitoba.

Friesen wrote a column about how "clueless'' Syracuse was when things predicatably got out of hand with a bunch of Game 4 brawls. Then-Columbus GM Doug MacLean tracked him down in the pressbox to give him an earful, trying to explain how hockey actually works.

Friesen just smirked like he earned a merit badge, and, in fact, proudly referenced that confrontation in a recent column when he was trying to describe how heated the playoffs can get.

From where I sit, that's like tossing a match and gasoline on my computer and then claiming I have a dangerous job because there are fires all around.